Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2016
Publication Title
Rhetor
Abstract
This essay examines how the U.S. Declaration of Independence justified revolution in the midst of a volatile set of political exigencies. To engage and conciliate those colonists who held fragile or ambivalent attitudes toward the idea of independence, this short document strove to construct a narrative that vindicated mass political upheaval and laid an explanatory groundwork for the efforts to come. The Declaration is more than a starting point; it was negotiated within history at a specific juncture, and informed by the intellectual climate of the 18th century. I argue that its pivotal strategy marshals a Deist conception of Reason equated with transcendent Natural Law. The result is a rhetorically constructed narrative of resigned inevitability.
Recommended Citation
Belanger, Patrick, "Rhetoric and Collective Necessity: The Declaration of Independence" (2016). HCOM Faculty Publications and Presentations. 5.
https://digitalcommons.csumb.edu/hcom_fac/5
Comments
Published in Rhetor, Vol. 6, 2016, pp. 84-98, by the Canadian Society for the Study of Rhetoric.
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